They read Abandon
by ImmortalAriadneGoddess
Summary: Pierce, John, Uncle Chris, Alex, and Pierce's mom and dad find themselves in a mysterious room with a strange set of books that seem to tell Pierce's future in order to change the what's to come. How will everyone react to the past and the present? [Set after Pierce's meeting with John in the cemetery.] Don't like don't read. Please review ! :) x
1. Prologue

P.S I don't own this nor am I Meg Cabot (this is after the cemetery meeting with John).

A burst of light momentarily flashes while a teenage girl with long dark brown hair , deep warm brown eyes, wearing a white sundress ; a guy in his teens, his hair as dark like midnight, towering height of maybe six foot four, eyes like steel , wearing tight skinny jeans and a gray top; a woman with lond dark hair like Pierce's ; a middle-aged man ; a man around his twenty's wearing a knit cap and lastly a teen looking quite similar to him.

THUMP!

Around them was a white rectangular room with no windows nor doors. There were two big brown couches near a hearth. There were also some doors marked GIRLS , BOYS, KITCHEN, & BATHROOMS.

" Ouch!" cried Pierce after she fell.

The woman closely resembling her stood up and said, " Where are we ?" She quickly redirected her attention to Pierce as she lay sprawled across the floor. "Honey, you okay?"

"Sure," she said as she stood up , she threw a glance across the room and found herself looking at her dad, Uncle Chris, Alex and no... _It couldn't be him, it's impossible... _John Hayden. _ Oh No..._

"What are we doing here? And who are you?" Pierce's dad asked.

John just stayed silent . Uncle Chris recovered and helped Alex up.

"Look!" said Alex. Everyone redirected their gaze and saw a note.

_Dear Everyone, _

_The future is pretty messed up and dangerous to prevent that I want you to read this book here underneath this note called , Abandon. It's concerning everyone's safety especially Pierce's. Sorry Pierce but if I don't people you hold most dear will be in danger. There's no nedd to worry about beds , food, or bathrooms there are doors that hold basically what you need. Oh, and John someone's filling in for you at your "job" while you're absent._

_Sincerely , A Friend._

Everyone stared at Pierce. Pierce had to will herself not look at John, who at the corner of her eye was deep in thought.

"Who's John?" Deborah asked (Pierce's mom)

"Him." as Pierce bobbled her head towards him timidly.

" Okay well should we read?" suggested Alex.

After a couple of minutes everyone agreed.

Alex opened the book and read aloud, **"Chapter one."**


	2. Chapter One

Alex reads, **Anything can happen in the blink of an eye. Anything at all. **

**One. **

**Two. **

**Three.**

_**Blink.**_

"This is weird." Alex blurts out.

"Alex!" yelled Uncle Chris

"Okay ok ill keep going."

**A girl is laughing with her friends. Suddenly, a crater splits apart the earth. Through it bursts a man in an ink blank chariot forged in the deepest pits of hell, drawn by stallions with hooves of steel and eyes of flame before anyone can shout a warning, before the girl can turn and run, those thundering hooves are upon her.**

"Isn't that the myth of Persephone?" Deborah mused.

" I'm pretty sure it is, Mom." said Pierce

**The girl isn't laughing , she's too late, the man has leaned out of the ink black chariot to seize her by the waist & pull her back down into that crater with as she once knew it will never be the same.**

"You betcha." murmured Uncle Chris. _Why would it mention the myth in the book, maybe it's relevant._

**You don't have to worry about that girl, she's just a character from a book, her name was Persephone, & her being kidnapped by Hades, the god of the dead, & taken to live with him in the Underworld was just how the Greeks explained the changing of the seasons. It's what's known as an origin myth.**

**What happened to me that's no myth.**

Everyone suddenly looks at Pierce.

"What happened sweetheart?" said Deborah

"Nothing." she said avoiding from looking up and at John.

"Alright," she said although she couldn't help feeling suspicious. Alex soon continues reading.

**A few days ago, if you'd told me some story about some girl who had to go live with a guy in his underground palace for six months out of the year, I'd just laugh. You think that girl has problems?I'll tell you who has problems: me. Way bigger ones than Persephone.**

Everyone gazed at her once again.

"Well what's the problem Pierce, anything you wanna tell us?"

She murmured blushing , "No."

"You sure?"

" Yes."

"Alright I'll continue."

**Especially now, after what happened the other night in the cemetery. **

Pierce could feel Mom, Dad's and John's stare on her.

" What were you doing at night in the cemetery?" Pierce's father asked.

"Nothing."

"Doesn't seem like nothing , what happened?"

"Nothing all right!" Pierce snapped. She softened her gaze "Sorry."

"Ok-ayy, I'll just read now."

**What **_**really **_**happened I mean.**

This raises some eyebrows.

**The police they think they know of course so does the whole island,it seems,has a theory. That's the diffrence between them and me. They all have theories. **

**I **_**know.**_

"Anything you would care to share?"

" I don't know maybe the book will explain."

"Fine."

**So who cares what happened to Persephone? Compared what happened to me, that's nothing.**

Everyone looks at her for an explanantion except John. Alex soon continues reading.

**Persephone was lucky, her mom showed up to bail her out. No one's coming to rescue me. So take my advice: whatever you do? Don't blink.**

"Well," Alex said breaking the stony silence ," that's the end of the chapter, who wants to read next?"

" I will," said Uncle Chris.


	3. Chapter Two

"I will," answered Uncle Chris.

**Once I died.**

Deborah, Zack (Pierce's dad), Alex, Uncle Chris, & Pierce flinched.

**No one is really sure how long I was gone. I was flatline for over an I was also is why - once they warmed me up - the defillibrators, along with a massive dose of epinephrine,brought me 's what the doctors say, anyway.I have a diffrent opinion why I'm still among the living.**

They quickly gaze at Pierce curiously.

**But it's one thing I've learned not to share with people.**

Deborah and Pierce's father exchange a glance.

_**Did you see a light? **_**That's the first thing everyone wants to know when they find out I died and came 's the first thing my seventeen-year old cousin Alex asked me tonight at Mom's party.**

"My party? It's your party honey." she says softly looking at Pierce.

"I so this is tonight's party that just ended?" asked Pierce

Alex shrugs," I guess."

**"Did you see a light?" No sooner were the words right out of Alex's mouth than his dad,my Uncle Chris, slapped him on the back of the head.**

Alex just glared at his dad.

**"Ow,"Alex said,reaching up to rub his scalp."What's wrong with asking if she saw a light?" **

**"It's rude," Uncle Chris said tersely."You don't ask people who died that." I took a drink from the soda I was hadn't even asked if I wanted a huge **_**Welcome to Isla Huesos, Pierce **_**party.."**

Deborah blushed lightly. " I honestly thought you would enjoy it. Why didn't you say anything?"

Pierce shrugged," I don't know,"she said as she put a hand under her chin.

**But what was I going to say? She was excited about 'd apparently invited everyone she knew back in the old days,including her entire family,none of whom had ever moved-except Mom and her younger brother, Chris-from the two-mile-by -four-mile island of the coast of South Floridaon which they'd been that Uncle Chris hadn't exactly left Isla Huesos to go to college, get married, and have a kid, the way Mom had.**

Uncle Chris raised an eyebrow at her.

She just blushed and stared at the floor. She muttered, "Sorry."

**"But the accident was almost two years ago,"Alex said."She can't still be sensitive about it."He looked at me."Pierce,"he said, his voice sarcastic," are you still sensitive about the fact that you died & then came back to life **_**nearly two years ago? **_

John glared briefly at Alex.

Pierce's heart twisted when she saw him glare. _Why is he glaring at him? I thought he wanted nothing to do with me? _

**I tried to smile. "I'm fine with it," I lied.**

"Why didn't you say anything if you weren't fine with it ?" asked Uncle Chris interrupting himself.

She lightly shruggled.

"Honey, if you ever need us just say the word, okay?" said Deborah

"Okay, thanks Mom." Pierce noticed that John was somewhat scrutinizing her from beside herself and Alex. _**(AN: The couches are facing towards each other: seating: couch #1: Deborah, Uncle Chris, Pierce's dad. ; couch #2 : Pierce, John, Alex)**_

**"Told you," Alex said to his me, he said,"So did you or did you not see a light?" I took a deep breath and quoted something I'd read on the Internet."Virtually all NDEs will tell you that when they die, they saw something, often some kind of light." **

**"**NDEs?" asked Deborah

**"What's an NDE?" Uncle Chris asked, scratching his head beneath his Isla Huesos Bait & Tackle cap. "Someone's who's had a near death-experience," I explained. **

"Oh."

**I wished I could scratch beneath the white sundress Mom had bought me to wear for the evening. **

Pierce's face flushed deeply red.

"That wouldn't very nice would it, Pierce?"

"No, Ma'am." she replied much to her chagrin, red still flooding her cheeks.

**It was too tight in the I didn't think that would be polite, even if Uncle Chris & Alex were family.**

"Good."

**"Oh," Uncle Chris said."NDE.I get it." NDEs I read couldm suffer from profound personality changes & difficulties readjusting to life after...well, preachers who'd come back from the dead had ended up joining biker clubs.**

"Seriously!" Alex said, snickering while Uncle Chris did the same. _Like father like son.._ Everyone was tittering , John was having trouble containing his laughter,was currently spying Pierce from the corner of his eye.

**Leather clad bikers had gotten up and gone straight to the nearest church to be born again.I thought I'd done pretty well for myself, all things considered.**

"You have Pierce." said Pierce's mother and father as they beamed proudly at her.

**Although when I'd glanced through my files my old school had sent over after it was suggested that my parents find an "alternative education solution" for me-which was their polite way of saying I'd been expelled after the "incident" last spring-I saw that the Wesport Academy for Girls may not necessarily agreed : **_**Pierce has a tendency to she just drifts when she does choose to pay attention , she tends to hyperfocus, but not generally on the point of the and TOVA testing suggested.**_

"You sure you have don't have ADHD, cousin?"

Pierce lightly hit his shoulder, "Oi! I have no such thing!"

"You sure, you're acting like it." She gave him a death glare. He turned away, " Okay,okay you don't, can you continue dad?"

**But that particular report had been written during the semester directly following the accident-more than a year before the "incident"-when I'd had a few more important things to worry about than homework. **

"Like what?" asked Pierce's dad

"I was just distracted."

"Sure," he said with a huff.

**Those jerks had even kicked me out of the school play-**_**Snow White-**_**in which I'd been cast as the lead.**

Deborah said, " That was so horrible wasn't it?"

"Yeah," she responded automatically. She could feel John's gaze on her just for a miniscule second.

**How had my drama teacher put it? Oh yeah: I seemed to be identifying a little too much with poor, undead Snow White. I don't see how I could've helped it at the time, in addition to having **_**died**_**, I'd also been born rich as a princess, thanks to Dad-**

"You're welcome."

**he's CEO of one of the world's largest providers of products & services to the oil, gas, & military industries(everyone's heard of his company. It's been in the news a lot lately)- & I also happened to been born looking like one, thanks to Mom. **

Deborah beamed happily.

**I inherited her delicate bone structure, thick dark hair, and wide dark eyes...**

'_Yeah I've certainly noticed , her eyelashes thick and dark and light as butterfly's wings... SNAP OUT OF IT, she won't go with me willingly , so why should I care?' _ thought John.

**I also, unfortunately, inheriting Mom's princess-tender heart, **

"Unfortunately?"

**It's what ended up killing me.**

"Ohh."

**"So what was at the end of the tunnel ?" Alex wanted to know."The light that's what you hear people say." "Your cousin didn't go into the light," his father said, looking worried beneath his baseball cap."If she had, she woudn't be pestering her." "It's okay," I said smiling at Uncle Chris ."I don't mind actually."I did, actually. But hanging around in the backyard with Uncle Chris & Alex was better than inside with a bunch of people I didn't to Alex, I said, " Some people do say they saw a light at the end of the of them knows exactly what it was, but they all have theories.**

Alex asked, "Like what?"

**"Like what?" asked Alex**

He blinked.

"Stop repeating yourself," Uncle Chris said with a wink.

**Thunder rumbled off in the wasn't people inside the house proabably couldn't hear it, what with all the laughter & the splashing of the waterfall in the distance over in the pool & the music Mom had been playing on the indoor/outdoor stereo speakers, not so cleverly designed to look like rocks. **

"Hey! I spent working on that for a long time."

**But I heard it. It had followed a burst of lightning. . . not heat lightnin,either, even though it was as hot at 8 o' clock at night early September in South Florida as it ever got back in Conneticut in July at hign noon. There was a storm after sea, & it was heading in our direction. "I don't know," I said. I thought of something I'd read."Some if them think the light is the pathway to a diffrent spiritual dimension, one accesible only to the dead. Alex grinne. "Cool," he said."The Pearly Gates."**

_**'**__More like my own inferno.' _thought Pierce.

**"Could be," I said shrugging."But scientists say the light is actually a hallucination produced by the brain's neurotransmitters firing all at once as they die." Uncle Chris eyes looked sad. "I like Alex's explanation better," he said."About the Pearly Gates."**

Deborah and Pierce's dad nodded simultaneously.

**I hadn't meant to make Uncle Chris feel bad.**

Interrupting himself he said, " You didn't you just reminded me of someone anyways... bad memories , I'll continue reading."

**"No one really knows for sure what happens to us when we die," I said quickly. "Except you," he pointed out. I felt more uncomfortable than ever in my too-tight white what I saw when I died wasn't a light.**

"Then what did you?" Alex eagerly asked.

"Right now's not the time Alex." His father said sharply.

**It wasn't anything close. I didn't like lying to Uncle Chris. I knew I shouldn't have been talking about this. Especially since Mom had wanted everything to be perfect tonight... not only tonight, but from now on.**

Deborah had a peculiar expression on her face, she turned to face her only daughter." Pierce honey I just want everything to be perfect not for me, but for YOU."she said.

Pierce only nodded unsure what to do or feel. Maybe everything would be fine... but there was always that doubt back in the recess of her mind.

**She'd gone all out buying the million-dollar house & flying in the famous friend from New York to decorate enlisted the aid of an enviromentally conscious landscaper who planted the backyard with native growth, like ylang-ylang trees and night blooming jasmine, so the air always smelled like a magazine ad for one of those celebrity perfumes.**

**She's even bought me a "beach cruiser" bicycle complete with a basket and bell-because I still didn't have my driver's license-painted my bedroom a soothing lavender,& enrolled me in the smae highschool she'd gone to 20 years earlier. "You're going to love it here, Pierce," she kept saying."You'll 're going to make a new 's going to be great. I just know it. I had good reason to believe everything wasn't going to be great.**

"Why?"

**But I kept it to was just so the party, she even hired professional caterers to cook & serve the shrimp cocktail, conch fritters, and chicken skewers. She'd released a flotilla of citronella candles in the pool to keep away the mosquitoes, then turned ont the waterfall, & thrown open every French door in the house.**

Alex was drooling thinking of the food... Yum! iOh well...

**"There's such a nice breeze," she kept saying, choosing to ignore the giant black storm clouds filling the night sky. . . .**

**Kind of like the way she was choosing to ignore the fact that she'd moved back to Isla Huesos to further her research on on her beloved roseate spoonbills-which look like pink flamingos**

**except that their beaks are pancaked like spoons**

"Flattering."

**-right after the worst enviromental disaster in American history had killed off most of them.**

Deborah shot a weak glare at her former husband, Zack (Pierce's Dad).

**Oh, & that her bright, animal-loving daughter had died & come back not quite. . . because of that her marriage to Dad had gone right down the tubes.**

"Pierce, honey if I hear you blame yourself again for this I'm going to have to request a family meeting.

**The divorce proceedings started while I was still in the hospital, in fact, when Mom kicked Dad out of the house for "letting me" went to go live in the penthouse apartment he keeps near his company's office in Manhattan, never imaging that a year & a half from now, he'd still be calling it home.**

**"It's much better to forgive and forget, Pierce," Dad always says time we speak."Then you can move on .Your mother needs to learn that."**

Zack nods his head until he catches his ex-wife's sharp glare at him.

**But really the term forgive & forget to me doesn't make sense to me.**

Zack puzzled asked his daughter,"Why?"

"I'm sure it'll explain," she replied.

**Forgiving does allow us to stop dwelling on an issue, which isn't always healthy (just look at my parents). But if we forget,we don't learn from our that can be knows this better than me?**

"That certainly sounds ominous."

**So forgive? Sure, Dad**

**But forget? Even if I wanted to I can' there's someone who won't let me. I don't blame Mom for wanting to come back to the island in which she was born and raisd, even if it **_**is**_** ungodly hot,often battered by hurricanes, & may have or may or may not have clouds of mystery chemicals billowing around it, in the same way I picture the evil from the box poor Pandora opened and then let loose on humanity.**

"Exactly."

**But if anyone had mentioned to me before I moved that the name of the place meant Island of Bones in English-and **_**why **_** the Spanish explorers who's found it had named it that- I proably would have never agreed to go along with Mom's "we're going to make a new start in Isla Huesos" plan. Especially since it's hard to make a new start in a place where you met the very person who keeps popping up to ruin your life over and over again.**

John suddenly growled softly," I do not!"

**Only I could hardly mention **_**that **_**to my mother either.**

Deborah was racked wih own flesh and blood couldn't come and confront her about things that were plaguing her.I shouldn't have sent her to all those psychiatrists and pushed her that she could change things she would start paying more attention to her child.

**The fact that I'd ever been to Isla Huesos once before**

"What? Deborah!."

"So what she's my daughter too Zack!"

"When?"

"How did you know I took her there? It could have been anyone!"

"Because it's so typical of you, Deb."

**was supposed to be this big secret**

"Not anymore!" said Alex in a sing-songy voice.

**(not a bad a secret between us girls ,Mom had always said).That's because Dad can't stand Mom's family,which he feels ( not without some justification) is filled with convicts and kook, not exactly a proper role model for his only had me promise never to tell him about the day trip we took to her father's funeral when I was I'd promised. What did I know? I'd never told. . . **

**. . . especially the part about what happened **_**after **_**the funeral, in the truth was, I never thought I really had to tell anyone, since Grandma knows about it.**

"She does?"

**So I didn't know anyone at Mom's party except Mom & Alex & Grandma, all of whom had sat in the same row with me at Grandpa's had been a decade earlier back when Uncle Chris had been in Chris wasn't** **adjusting well to life on the "outside."**

Alex said his face totally devoid of emotion,"Such as?"

**He didn't quite know what to do, for instance, whenever one of the caterers walked over to refill his champagne of just saying,"No, thank you," Uncle Chris would cry,"Mountain Dew!" & jerk his glass out of the way, so the champagne would pour all over the pool patio instead.**

Uncle Chris face flushed red. "Sorry Deb."

With a fond smile she said to him, "It's altight Christopher."

**"I don't drink," Uncle Chris would say sheepishly."I'm sticking to Mountain Dew."**

**"I'm so sorry sir," the caterer would reply, looking with dismay at the growing puddle of Veuve Clicquot at our feet.I decided I liked Uncle Chris,**

"Why thank you."

**even if Dad had warned me that would embark on a dark reign of terror & revenge immediately upon his release from all I'd ever seen him do in Isla Huesos-where he lived now with Grandma,who'd been raising Alex in his absence because Alex's mom had run off when he was just a baby, after Uncle Chris had been sent away to prison-was sit on the couch & obessively watch the Weather Channel, sippping Mountain Dew. But Alex's dad did scare me in one way:**

"How?"

**He had the saddest eyes of anyone I'd ever seen.**

"I do?"Uncle Chris asked

Pierce silently nodded.

**Except maybe one I was trying not to think about **_**him.**_**Just like when I tried not to think about when I people, however, were making both of these things extremely difficult.**

**"Not everyone who dies & comes back," I said carefully to Uncle Chris,"has the exact same experience-"**

**It was right as I was saying this that Grandma came teetering down the steps of the back porch on her little high ,Uncle Chris and Alex, she'd made and effort to dress up, & had on a filmy beige dress & one of her own hand-knitted silk scarves. "There you are,Pierce," she said in a voice that made it sound like she was annoyed.**

"She most likely is."

**"What are you doing out here?All these people are waiting inside to meet on, I want you to say hello to Father Michaels-" "Oh, hey," Alex said,brightening."I wonder if he knows."**

**"Knows what?" Grandma said, looking bewildered. "What the light was that Pierce saw when she died," Alex said.I think it was the Pearly Pierce says scientists say it's. . . what dot they say it is again, Pierce."**

"Way to put me on the spot," Pierce said glaring half-heartedly at Alex.

**I swallowed."A hallucination," I said."Scientists say they've gotten the same results in test subjects who weren't dying, by using drugs & electrodes to their of them saw a light,too." **

**"That's what you're doing out here?" Grandma asked,looking shocked."Committing blasphemy?"**

**After I died & came back, my grades took a downward 's when ym guidance counselor at the Wesport Academy for girls,, recommended that my parents find somthing outside of academics in which to get me interested. **

Zack muttered something like," Look how well that turned out."

**Children who fail to do well in school can often still be succesful in life,, assured my parents, if they discover something else into which to "engage." Eventually, I did find an interest outside of academics in which to "engage." One that ended up getting me kicked out of the Wesport Academy for Girls & landed me here in Isla Huesos, which some people call paradise.I'm pretty sure the people who call Isla Huesos paradise never met my grandma.**

**"No," Alex said with a laugh."Blasphemy would be saying the light is coming from between the legs of their new mom as they're born into their next course,if you were Hindu,that wouldn't be blasphemy at all."**

Deborah broke out chuckling and slapping her knee. "I can't believe you actually said that in front of my mother!"

**Grandma looked like she'd just bitten a lemon. "Well, Alexander Cabrero," she said sharply.**

"Ouch! First name." said Pierce snickering remembering the look on her cousin's face.

**"You are not you may also want to remember I that I'm the one making the payments on that junk heap you call a you'd like me to keep on doing so, you might want to think about being a little more respectful." "Sorry, ma'am," he said while looking down a the champagne puddle on the ground, while beside him, his father did the same, after quickly removing his baseball glanced over to me trying to change her expression into something a little softer.**

Alex mumbled," Of course, Pierce is the favorite."

**"Now, Pierce," she said."Why don't you come inside & say hello to Father Michaels?You won't remember him, of course, from Grandpa's funeral, because you were too young, but he remembers you & is so happy you'll be joining our little parish." "You know what?" I said."I'm not feeling so good." I wasn't making it up heat was staryting to feel oppresive.I wished I could undo a few of the buttons in the front of my too-tight dress. "I think I need some air."**

**"Then come inside," Grandma said, looking bewildered again."Where it's it would be if your mother hadn't opened up all the doors-" **

"Cue Mom/Aunt Deb."

**"What did I do now,Mother?" Mom appeared on the back porch & snagged a cocktail shrimp from a passing caterer."Oh, Pierce there you are.I was wondering where you'd disappeared to." Then she saw my face & said,"Honey, are you all right?"**

"What did I look like?"

"Like maybe you were going to get an anxiety attack."

**"She says she needs some fresh air," Grandma said still looking bewildered."But, she's standing 's wrong with here?Did she take her mediacation today?Are you **_**sure **_**Pierce is ready to go back to school,Deb?You know how she she-"**

**"She's fine,Mother," Mom me, she said, "Pierce-" I lifted my 's eyes seemed darker in the porch looked pretty and fresh in her white jeans, & loose silky looked was going to be great.**

**"I've got to go," I said, trying to keep down the panicky sob I felt rising in my throat.**

**"Go then,honey,"Mom said, leaning down from the porch to press on my forehead with her hand as if she were feeling for a fever.**

"Thanks, Mom."

"No problem honey."

**She smelled like she always did, of her perfume,& something dark hair swept my bare shoulder as she kissed me."It's don't forget to turn on your bicycle lights so people can see you."**

**"What?" Grandma sounded incredulous." You're just letting her go on a bike ride? But it's the middle of the party.**_**Her **_**party." Mom ignored her.**

"As usual."

**"Don't make any stops," she said to me."Stay on your bike." I turned around without saying anything to Alex & Uncle Chris, who were both staring at me in astonishment,**

Alex said," Of course, it was pretty strange you just wanted to bolt."

**& headed straight for the side yard where my new bike was parked. I didn't look back. **

**"And Pierce?" Mom called for me. My shoulders if Grandma had said made her change her mind?**

Deborah said with a huff of annoyance," As if."

**But all she added was "Don't be too long. A storm is coming."**

"Anyone else want to read?" said Uncle Chris.

Pierce volunteered and took the book from Uncle Chris and began.


	4. Author's Note : GoodBad News

Okay, I'm really sorry for being absent and not writing at all , not trying to make ecuses here but I've double exams and I've had to cram. And all that time was/is my writing time. But now school is officially over so I can now write freely as I wish.

I have some good news and bad. I think I'll start with the bad. the bad is I take it you've heard that stories are being deleted as we speak throughout the site, IDK if I'm in danger but no 1 can be too cautious. Good news is I've started uploading this story to just in case of deletion. I'll leave the link here! I promise I'll start writing tomorrow since it's 2 AM here.

Link:  5044587-reading-the-mediator-shadowland

_**Bonne Nuit! ( Good Night!)**_


	5. AN

Thank you so much for following this story and just ignore the link I don't have abandon on wattpad anymore, I'll be continuing it here and I am currently writing a new chapter and thank you for your patience.

And I'm really sorry i haven't update school's started and some personal problems have arised so it's harder to write now plus I have 3 stories to write since I've been working on a werewolf romance on Wattpad.

:) -IAD


	6. Chapter Three

**Disclaimer: I do not own this nor am I Meg Cabot.**

* * *

Pierce cleared her throat before she started to read.

_When I beheld him the desert vast,_

"_Have pity," unto him I cried_,

"_Whiche'er you are, or shade or real man!"_

DANTE ALIGHIERI, _Inferno, _Canto I

"That's curious."

**Everyone wants to believe that there's something else – something great - waiting for them on the other side. Paradise. Valhalla. Heaven.**

A rumble of agreements ran along the room. After all, who wanted to believe that not Heaven but Hell was waiting for them on the other side?

**Their next – hopefully – horrible life. It's just that I've **_**been**_** to the other side. **

Alex raised an eyebrow.

"Does this mean that you actually almost went inside of the Pearly Gates?" Alex asked, curiosity winning over tact of his cousin's feelings.

"I wouldn't exactly call it the Pearly Gates," Pierce vaguely replied.

Hoping to dodge more questions, she continued reading.

**And it's not paradise. At least right away. It's a truth I've had to bear alone because nothing good has happened to the few whom I've shared it with. **

Deborah eyed her daughter suspiciously. "Like who?"

**So, sometimes I have to get out before I say or - do – something I'll regret. Otherwise, something bad will happen. **_**He **_**will happen.**

John snorted. As if he would ever hurt her, he was only trying to protect her. Why couldn't she see that?

"Who's _he_, Pierce?" asked Chris.

**Mom understood. **

"How could I have understood, if I don't really even know what you're talking about?" Deborah queried, sounding confused.

Pierce spoke up. "I was probably referring to something else."

**Not about him, of course – she didn't know about him – but about my needing to get out.**

"Oh."

**That's why she left me out. Tearing down from the hill of our new house, the breeze in my hair constantly cooling me off, all I could think of was Grandma. "Man, what man?" That's what Grandma said the other day in her house when I got off the couch, where I'd been watching the Weather Channel with Uncle Chris, and followed her into the kitchen to ask about Grandpa's funeral . . . more specifically what happened afterwards.**

"What did happen?" Chris asked, curiosity leaking into his tone.

"**You know," I said. "The man I told you about. The one with the bird." We'd never had a chance to speak about it again. Not since the day it happened. Not only was that day supposed to be a secret**

"No kidding," Zack muttered under his breath, looking distinctly ruffled.

-**just between us girls, Mom and me – Grandma and I had never been in the same room thanks to Dad. As the years went by, what actually happened that afternoon in the cemetery began to seem more and more like a dream. How could any of it happen? It was impossible.**

"Nothing's impossible," Pierce mumbled mostly to herself.

"I'm hungry," said Alex absently. He then faced his dad. "Do you think we can get a snack after this chapter?"

"Sure," Chris replied briefly, more intent in listening to this chapter.

**Then I died. And I realized what I'd seen that day in the cemetery not only hadn't been a dream, it had been the singularly most important thing that had ever happened to me in my life. Well, up until my heart stopped.**

"So this somehow connects to your 'death?' Zack concluded, making quotations with his hands at the word death.

Pierce nodded confirming his statement.

"**Go outside and play for a little while," Grandma had said. "Your mom's busy right now. I'll come get you when we're done."**

This had started to fuel some of Zack's temper. Where they just going to leave her alone to wander, where anything could happen to Pierce?

**She and mom had been in the cemetery sexton's office after the funeral, signing the last of the paperwork for Grandpa's tomb. Maybe I had been a little fidgety. I think I'd knocked something over the sexton's desk.**

"You did, honey."

**I wouldn't be surprised. Like my cousin Alex, who'd also been there, I'd always had a problem paying attention. Unlike my cousin Alex, my problem resulted in being less, not more, heavily supervised. Because I was a girl, and what kind of trouble could a girl get into?**

John grimaced and quietly added verbally, "You would be surprised."

All three adults in the room exchanged nervous looks.

**I remember Mom looking up from whatever forms she was helping Grandma fill out. She'd smiled at me through her tears. **

"**It's okay, sweetie," she'd said. "Go on outside. Just stay close. It'll be alright."**

Zack's irritation burst and glared at Deborah. "You just left her all alone like that!"

Deborah in return scowled at him. "Excuse me for grieving my father. Besides she was just within reach."

Chris wasn't really looking too happy about that either, but he instead kept quiet.

**I had stayed close.**

"See!"

**Back then I always listened to my mother.**

Deborah's questioning look landed on her daughter. "What's that supposed to mean?"

Pierce sheepishly looked down at the floor and away from the book. "Nothing."

Not satisfied with her response, Deborah vowed to keep a sharper eye on her daughter.

**I found the dove just a dozen yards or so away from the cemetery sexton's office. It was limping along between the paths of the tombs, one of the wings dragging along behind it,**

"It must be broken."

**obviously broken. I immediately raced after it, trying to scoop it up,**

Deborah winced. "That might not be the best approach."

**Since I knew if I brought it back to my mom, she'd be able to help. She loved birds.**

Said person nodded.

**But I just ended up making things worse. The bird panicked and half flew, half leaped into the side of a nearby crypt, smashing against the bricks.**

Everyone flinched minus John.

**Then it just lay there. As I hurried to its side, I realized with horror that it was dead. Naturally, I began to weep. I'd already felt pretty sad, considered the fact that I'd just been at the funeral of a grandparent I'd never met, then kicked out of the cemetery sexton's office for my behavior. Now this?**

"That does seem sort of harsh," Alex observed.

**That's when a man had come along the path. **

"You had better stay away," Zack said to Pierce.

**To me, a first grader, he'd seem impossibly tall, almost a giant, even after he knelt down beside me and asked why I was crying. Looking back, I realized he was only in his teens, hardly a man at all. But as tall as he was, and given that he was all dressed in black, he'd seemed much older to me than his actual years. **

"That seems familiar," Alex observed looking over curiously at John, which caused Pierce to whiten a bit.

"**I was t-trying to help," I'd said, nearly incoherent with sobs, as I pointed to the bird. "She was hurt. But then I scared her and made it worse. Now she's dead. It was an acc-accident." **

"**Of course it was," he said, reaching down to scoop the limp, fragile body in one hand.**

"Surely he can't be that bad, he seems to like birds," Deborah pointed out.

"**I don't want to go to hell," I wailed. **

"**Who says you were going to hell?" he asked, looking bemused.**

Deborah rolled her eyes and gave a bitter smile. "My mother."

"**That's where murderers go," I informed tearfully. "My grandma told me."**

"**Well, you aren't a murderer," he assured me. "And I think you've got a bit of time before you have to start worrying about where you're going after you die."**

"Famous last words," Pierce muttered under breath.

Zack shut his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose with the pad of his thumb and forefinger. "Why are you still talking to him? He could have been a pedophile for all you knew!"

**I wasn't supposed to speak to strangers. My parents had drilled this into my head.**

"Apparently, not hard enough then," Zack said rather loudly and pinpointed his accusing stare to his ex-wife.

**But this stranger seemed nice enough. And my mother was only just down the path, inside the office. I was sure was safe.**

"**Should we find a coffin for her?" I asked, pointing to the bird. I was bursting with knowledge I'd just learned at the funeral that afternoon. "When we die, we're supposed to get put inside a coffin, and then no one sees us ever again."**

"Not always," John commented, his grey eyes looking millions of miles away.

'**Some of us," the stranger had replied a bit drily. "Not at all of us. And yes, I suppose we could put her in a coffin. Or I could make her come alive again. Which would you prefer?"**

"**You can't make her come alive again," I'd said, so startled by the question, my tears were forgotten.**

"Well, at least he made her forget she was crying," Alex joked.

**He'd been petting the bird, which was definitely dead. Its head drooped over the top of his fingers, its neck broken. "No one can do that."**

"**I can," he said. "If you'd like."**

Deborah chuckled uneasily. "He doesn't actually think he can bring that bird back from the dead can he? That's absurd."

John smiled bitterly at the ceiling. 'You have no idea,' he thought. He remembered the way he had found Pierce all innocent and doe-eyed, crying at the bird she'd accidentally startled. It seemed so selfless and had been drawn to her, even at such an early age.

"**Yes, please," I'd whispered,**

Chris clenched his teeth. Didn't Pierce know any better not to take anything from people she didn't know? She was basically taking the candy a strange man might have offered her on the street.

**and he passed his hand over the bird. A second later, its head popped up, and with bright-eyed flutter, it took off from his hands, its wings beating strongly as it flew off into the bright blue sky.**

Almost everyone in the room gasped. Who was this man? And more importantly, how did he do that?

**I was so thrilled, I'd cried, "Do it again!"**

Pierce mentally scolded herself at the mention.

"**I can't," he said, climbing to his feet. "She's gone."**

**I thought about this, then reached out to take his hand and began tugging. "Can you do it to my grandpa? They just put him over there –"I pointed towards a crypt on the far side of the cemetery.**

"Pierce!" Deborah scolded her, but not too harshly. "Haven't I taught you any better?"

Pierce had the grace to blush at the statement.

**He'd said, not unkindly, "No. I'm sorry." **

"**But it would make my mom so happy! Grandma, too. **_** Please? **_** It'll only take a second – " **

"**No," he said once again, beginning to look alarmed. He knelt down beside me once more. "What's your name?"**

"**Pierce," I said.**

Chris groaned. At this rate, what else had she given away?

"**But –"**

"**Well, Pierce," he said. His eyes, I'd noticed, were the same color as the blades on my ice skates back in Connecticut.**

Alex's eyes flickered to John's in suspicion. His eyes were similarly colored to the ones described in the book, a steely gray.

Under his speculative gaze, John resisted the urge to squirm but instead became stiff.

"**Your grandfather would be proud of you. But it's best just to leave him where he is. It might frighten your mother and grandmother a bit to see him up and walking around after he's already been buried, don't you think?"**

"Didn't think of that did you?" Alex questioned his cousin, sounding quite smug.

Pierce mock-glared at him. "Well excuse me for-"

Pierce was cut off by her father's warning glint in his eyes.

**I hadn't considered this, but he was probably right.**

**That's when Grandma had come looking for me. The man saw her. He had to have seen her, and she him, since they exchanged polite "good afternoons" before the man turned and, after saying good-bye to me, walked away. **

"**Pierce," Grandma said when she reached me. "Do you know who he was?"**

"**No," I said. **

Deborah winced. "That probably wasn't the best thing to tell her."

**But I proceeded to tell her everything else about him, and the miraculous thing he'd done. **

"**And did you like him?" Grandma asked, when I'd come to the end of my breathless narration.**

Nobody seemed to question the nature of that particular question except John and Chris.

John narrowed his eyes at the books direction. If she didn't seem to know him, then why had she asked Pierce if she liked him? Something wasn't right.

Chris seemed to in the same train of thought because with his brows furrowed, he asked, "If he was stranger then why would she have asked her if she liked him? Unless she knows him."

Something very odd was going on.

"**I don't know," I replied, bewildered by the question. He'd made a dead bird come back to life! But he'd refused to the same for Grandpa. So it was a problem.**

**Grandma had smiled for the first time all day.**

"**You will," she said.**

The statement hung around the room sinking in. What had she meant by that?

**Then she'd taken hold of my hand and walked me back to the car, where Mom and Alex were waiting.**

**I remember looking back. There was no sign of the man, just scarlet blossoms from the twisting black branches of a Poinciana tree that hung like a canopy above our heads, bursting red as firecrackers against the bright blue sky . . . . **

"Creepy . . ."

**But now, like everyone I'd told about what I'd seen when I died – not a light but a man – Grandma insisted I'd imagined the entire thing.**

Deborah crossed her arms over chest. "Maybe Mother's developing Alzheimer's."

"Sure she is," Zack said, looking doubtful.

"**Of course there wasn't a man in the cemetery, bringing birds back from the dead," she'd said the other day in her kitchen, shaking her head.**

"It does sound ludicrous." Alex admitted but then hastily added," Not that I'm doubting you." When he saw the look Pierce had shot him.

"**Whoever heard of such a thing? You know, Pierce, I worry about you. Always daydreaming . . . and ever since your accident, I hear you've gotten worse. And don't think you're going to get by on just your looks, either.**

"Never said I was."

**Your mother has looks **_**and brains**_**, and see what happened to her? Pretty is all well and good until Mr. Moneybags decides he's going to let your child drown-" **

Zack frowned. "Mr. Moneybags?"

"**Grandma," I said, trying to keep my voice even. "How can you say the man wasn't there when you yourself asked me if I-"**

"**I really hope this new school works out for you, Pierce," Grandma interrupted. "Because you certainly managed to burn some bridges at your last one, didn't you?" She thrust a tray of sandwiches into my arms. **

"How rude." Alex muttered.

"**Now take that in to your uncle before he starves to death. He hasn't had a speck to eat since breakfast."**

**I had left her house then and there – after delivering the sandwiches, of course –and set off on my bike for home. I felt like I had to before something awful happened. Awful things always happened when I got mad. Things that weren't my fault. It was better for me to leave for me to leave before they got worse.**

**Before **_**he **_**showed up.**

"Who is he? You keep saying _he's_ going to show up as if he's a ghost of some sort." Chris tersely noted while the parents in the room leaned in anticipation of the answer.

"Let's just say he's close, but I don't think we'll have to worry about him anymore." Pierce answered while she avoided direct eye-contact with everybody in the room.

**Now, here I was on my bike again, only this time I was pedaling with no particular destination in mind. I just needed to get away . . . from Grandma. From questions. From the sound of all the party chatter. From the splashing of the waterfall into that pool . . . especially from that pool . . . **

"In other words, everything."

**Unlike "the incident" last spring at my old school, the accident was my fault. I tripped – on my own scarf – and hit my head, then fell into the deep end of our pool back in Connecticut.**

Pierce's voice wavered slightly at the mention of her 'death,' but only John noticed as he stared at her with his silvery eyes.

**I'd been trying to rescue an injured bird . . . yes, another one. **

Alex leaned forward in his seat, listening clearly to Pierce's voice that was about to describe what happened. So far, he didn't know any explicit details in which he'd badgered about but then he had scolded by his somewhat estranged father.

**The bird survived, and without the help of the stranger from the Isla Huesos cemetery. **

**I was not so lucky.**

**The temperature of the water when I hit it was as paralyzing as the blow I'd received to the back of my head. It quickly soaked through my winter coat and boots, making my arms and legs too heavy to lift even to dog-paddle, let alone swim. The heavy canvas pool cover that Dad had forgotten to get fixed**

Like always, Deborah glared at her ex-husband.

**collapsed instantly beneath my weight and tangled around me, as constricting as the embrace of a python.**

**I was too far from the safety ladder or steps to swim to them, weighted as I was with my clothing and all that canvas pulling me downward.**

**If I had managed to reach the steps, I doubt I'd have the strength to pull myself up.**

"You're right. It's too much weight." John agreed.

**I tried my best, though. **

"Of course you did, honey."

**It's amazing what a fifteen-year-old, even one with a subdural hematoma, can do when she's desperate to stay alive.**

Deborah almost choked back a sob, a lump forming in her throat.

**Dad had been on a conference call in his study at the time, way at the far end of the house. He'd forgotten that Mom was at the library, working on finishing her dissertation on the mating habits of roseate spoonbills, and that I wasn't over my best friend Hannah's or the animal shelter, where I volunteered, and that it was the housekeeper's day off.**

Zack gulped at the looks he was receiving. He had felt guilty like any other person would but who could blame him? He was distracted at the moment, and with a meeting no less.

**Just like he'd forgotten to mention to anyone that a couple of the metal rivets were supposed to hold the pool cover in place had rusted through the course of the winter.**

Deborah seethed accusingly at her ex-husband. If he had bothered to e unglued from his precious job and paid more attention to Pierce, the accident could have been prevented.

**Not that it would have made much of a difference – at least to me -**

"Of course it would have. Maybe all the difference in the world," Chris commented as worry flitted across his features.

**if Dad had remembered any of these things, or even if he'd been off the phone. I never got a chance to scream for help.**

Alex flinched, which didn't go unnoticed by anyone in the room, even Pierce, whose voice trembled as she read about her so-called death. John wavered on unflinchingly, as if he were used to this sort of thing.

Alex wasn't so sure he wanted to know the extent of what happened to his cousin anymore. Hearing about how she could have died . . .

**Drowning doesn't happen in real life the way it does in the movies. By the time it entered my contused skull that I was in any kind of trouble, the weight from all the water I'd reflexively swallowed from the shock of the cold – it was February in New England – had already caused my body to sink to the bottom of the pool like a stone.**

**After the initial panic and pain, it was actually quite peaceful down there.**

The adults gaped at her. Peaceful? Peaceful how? She was drowning!

**All I could hear was my own heartbeat and the sound of the bubbles coming down my throat . . . and both of these were growing fainter, and further apart.**

Pierce's voice seemed to grow solemn and quieter at this.

**I didn't know at the time that this was because I was dying.**

**The afternoon sunlight – streaming through the leaves blown across the top of the water – made beautiful patterns on the floor of the pool around me. It reminded me of the way the sun had streamed through the glass-stained windows in the church where they'd held my grandfather's funeral.**

Deborah dabbed her eyes with the back of hands as tears threatened to spill.

Zack on the other hand, guiltily looked down at the ground.

Chris and Alex seemed stoic as ever, but you could see the whirlwind of emotions in there, just like John was doing.

**Even though I wasn't to talk about it, I'd never forgotten that day, or how hard my mom and grandmother had sobbed throughout the service. . . . .**

**Nor had I forgotten how tightly Grandma had held my hand as she led me away from the cemetery afterwards, and how red those blossoms from the branches of the Poinciana trees had looked against the sky above our heads. . . . **

"That looks like foreshadowing."

**. . . red as the tassels above our heads on the ends of my scarf floating up and around my face as I lay dying at the bottom of our pool.**

**Maybe that's why I saw them again after I rode away from the party –**

"The tassels?" Alex asks.

**not the tassels, of course, but the Poinciana blossoms –**

Alex blushed and ducked his head down.

Pierce snickered at her cousin's face.

**I jammed on my bicycle's brakes.**

**I hadn't realized I'd ridden as far as the cemetery. My feet had taken me there unconsciously.**

John groaned and put his head in his hands. So this how Pierce had ended up there. He presumed she had gone there on purpose.

"I'm starting to think you have an odd fixation with that cemetery." Deborah paused and frowned to herself. "It's not really healthy. Even John's worried about you." She finished off with a wink.

'_Eww,' _thought Pierce.

**I knew why, of course. It wasn't the first time it had happened. **

**I'd ridden through the cemetery more than once since arriving in Isla Huesos - Mom had even included it on the little "orientation" tour she gave me on her arrival. Because all the coffins were in above ground crypts and vaults, the graveyard had become one of the island's top sightseeing destinations. **

"Why would anyone come just to see dead bodies?"

**It turns if you bury bodies in a place regularly flooded by hurricanes, all the skeletons will pop out of the ground.**

"How charming," John commented drily causing Chris' lips to twitch.

**Then you'll find your loved ones' remains dangling from trees and fences, or even down at the beach, like something out a horror movie.**

"**That's why," Mom had informed me. "Spanish explorers who discovered this island five hundred years ago christened it Isla Huesos - Island of Bones. When they got here, it was covered with human bones, probably from a storm that had washed up on an Indian burial ground."**

Zack slapped a hand to his forehead. "What a thing to tell her, Deb."

**But though I'd ridden through the cemetery several times since my arrival on Isla Huesos, I'd never been able to find the tree I'd seen that day when I was seven.**

Deborah turned her eyes onto her daughter who was holding and reading from the book. "Don't worry, they probably just chopped it down or maybe it blew away in a storm.

**Not until the night of the party.**

Deborah was confused as were the others of the room, except for two people in the room. Why until the night of the party and not in broad daylight?

**Which was what made me do it.**

"You better not do anything dangerous, young lady," Chris blatantly warned Pierce.

"**Don't make any stops," Mom had said. "Stay on your bike," she'd said. "A storm is coming."**

Pierce tried not to wince at the statement. How right she had been. A storm was coming. A storm just for her.

**And now that I was standing in front of the Poinciana tree, I could see the storm coming our way wasn't just the one Mom had referred to. **

**It was something much, much worse.**

**Most of the flowers from the tree had fallen to the ground. Dead and withered, they lay around my feet like a red carpet, whispering to one another as the wind picked them up and scattered them further down the paved path.**

"Do you know what this reminds me of?" Alex whispered to Chris. "One of those old creepy horror movies."

**The crypt beneath the tree didn't look any different from the way it had the day of my grandfather's funeral. The plaster was still falling off in places, revealing bricks that were as red as the blossoms beneath my feet.**

John paled making him look as white as a sheet. He knew the description of that particular crypt very well. It was his crypt, after all.

**The main difference was that now I could see a name carved in block lettering above the entrance to the vault, a scrolled wrought-iron gate.**

**No date. Just a name.**

_**HAYDEN**_

"Hayden, that's a rather unusual name," Chris mused, putting himself in a practical thinking pose. "If his name is here, then it must be somehow crucial to the story at hand."

**I hadn't noticed the name when I was seven. I'd had too many other things in my mind. The same way I'd ridden through this cemetery so many times during the past week and never recognized the tree until tonight.**

"**He wasn't real, Pierce."**

Pierce made a disgruntled face at this which her uncle mistook for misery.

He laid a hand on her shoulder, comfortingly. "Of course he's real, like Dumbledore said, 'Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?' **(A/N: Credit to the wonderful J.K. Rowling for this ;] )**

Pierce's lips twitched at the cheesiness of her uncle. "When did you become so wise?"

"When did you become so cheeky?"

**It hadn't just been Grandma the other day in her kitchen who'd said it, either, but all those psychiatrists my poor parents dragged me to after my accident, unable to believe the reports they kept receiving from my teachers that their precious daughter wasn't performing at an above-average or even average level.**

"Of course we were shocked; you were a very good student." Deborah said. "Until we started getting reports from your teachers about you, that you weren't paying attention, didn't complete your homework, and etc."

**It's very common for patients who've lost electrical activity in their heart or brain for any interval of time to report having seen some sort of hallucination during the period they were flatline.**

"Bullshit," Alex coughed into his hand. Chris simply slapped him promptly in the back of the head. "Not here."

**But it was vital for my mental health, all those doctors told me, to remember that it had been **_**only a dream.**_

**Yes, it had been very realistic. But I couldn't see how there'd been some things I'd read about in books at school, or seen on TV, maybe seen years earlier – though I never told any of them what happened at Grandpa's funeral – in the vision I had during my near-death experience?**

Zack narrowed his eyes at the book. "Like what?"

**This was important to keep in mind, too, as was the fact that while it was happening, I'd been able to control my own actions. This was what was known as lucid dreaming.**

Deborah nodded. "And nothing more." She was convinced that this was the case, lucid dreaming. But as the book advanced, her reasons and beliefs had been tilted slightly. The question was, was this another that was going to be changed?

**Had what happened to me been real, I would have been able to escape my captor. **

**So I had absolutely nothing to worry about! He wasn't coming back for me. Because he was a figment of my imagination.**

**I'd sat across from those psychiatrists, and I'd nodded. They were right. Of course they were. **

**But inside, I'd felt so . . . **

**. . . **_**sorry for**_** them. **

Zack was confounded. Why did his daughter feel sorry them? They had everything. They had gone to college, gotten their diplomas and certificates, and gotten a job where they made thousands of dollars. What did she have to feel possibly sorry for?

**Because the walls behind those doctors' desks were filled with the so many framed diplomas and degrees – some of them from the very same Ivy League schools my parents now despaired of my ever being able to get into. **

"We just want the best for you."

**And that's what made me the saddest of all. Because my parents couldn't see that it didn't matter. All those diplomas, all those degrees. **

_**And those doctors still didn't have the slightest idea what they were talking about.**_

"But they're doctors. They're supposed to know about this stuff." Zack argued, a flush slowly creeping up on his neck. **'**They're best educated in this aspect, so it wouldn't do you any good to doubt them."

**Because I had proof.**

Alex rolled his eyes and smirked. "Prove it."

**I always had. As I stood in front of the crypt beneath the Poinciana tree, I undid the first three buttons of the too-tight dress Mom had suggested I wear to the party, and I pressed my fingers against it. I could have pulled it out at any time in any one of those offices and shown it to them and said, "Lucid dreaming? Really? What about this then, Doctor?"**

Chris gasped silently. It couldn't be what he was thinking of could it?

**But I never did. I kept where I always did, tucked inside my top.**

Alex looked disappointed at this.

**Because – despite the fact that they didn't believe me – all those doctors had tried so hard so hard to help me. They seemed so nice.**

**I didn't want anything to happen to them.**

**And I had found out the hard way that bad things happened to people who took too much interest in my necklace.**

Deborah frowned. "Your necklace? Wait your necklace. Is your necklace the thing that you said you had as proof that it happened?"

Pierce nodded briefly at her mother.

This caused the others in the room to realize it, too.

**So after that, I never showed it to everyone. Not even Grandma when she'd said that thing in her kitchen. Not that it would have made a bit of difference to her.**

"Unfortunately true."

**It wasn't until that I was standing in front of the crypt where we'd met that I suddenly realized maybe **_**I **_**was the one who was making the bad things happen.**

"That's ridiculous. How much trouble could you cause?"

**Because I'd come back. Not only come back from the dead, but come back to where it all started. **

**What was I even doing here? Was I as crazy as everyone back in Connecticut kept saying I was? I was **_**in a cemetery by myself after dark. **_** I needed to get out of there. I needed to run.**

"Hallelujah!" Alex said sarcastically. "Finally a response."

**Every hair on my body was standing up, telling me to run. **

"You must not have a lot of hair then." Chris cracked a smile, trying to diffuse the obvious tension in the room.

**But of course by then it was too late. Because someone was coming, crushing the dried-up flower petals on the path beneath his feet as he got closer.**

"Run!" Deborah screamed.

"Should we tell her she's screaming at a book?" Chris whispered to his son.

"Nah," Alex whispered back.

**Bones. That's what it sounded like as those flowers got trampled. The breaking of tiny bones.**

**Oh, God. Why had mom told me that story? Why couldn't I have a normal mother who told normal stories about fairy godmothers and glass slippers, instead of stories about human skeletal remains scattered across beaches? **

"I didn't want you to be disillusioned. Life isn't always fair."

**I didn't even have to turn around to see it who it was. I knew who it was. Of course I knew. **

Almost everyone in the room leaned in anticipation to see who it was.

**The scream I let out when I actually spun around and saw his face was still loud enough to wake the dead.**

Pierce blew out a huff of air. She was glad the chapter had ended. She needed break and felt and felt like ants were crawling all over her skin.

Chris looked deflated at the prospect of not knowing who it was, but nevertheless stood up and let a smile grace his face.

"Why don't we go have a snack? I'm sure you're all at least a little bit hungry." Chris said, his eyes smiling faintly.

Zack, Deborah, Alex, Chris and Pierce soon left for the kitchen leaving Pierce behind alone with John.

Pierce noticed John looking intently at her, and when she did she left for the kitchen herself too, but not before catching John's eye one last time.

* * *

**Oh my god, you don't know how sorry I am for leaving this story for so long. It's certainly been a crazy year for me. I mean school's started for me now and I come home tired and exhausted from everything. Like right now, I'm failing like everything except History. Anyways, when I do have time to write, I just don't feel particularly inspired to write and I don't because then it feels completely forced and crappy. Anyway thanks to every reader I've had so far and those of you that have reviewed so far! It totally makes my day. **** I'll update again as soon as I can but I work better with some feedback and reviews. Those help me write.**

**So, I went back and saw the earlier chapters and they made me cringe from the grammar and such so I'll be editing that soon. I have other stories on Wattpad if you're interested. My username there is MoonGoddessLuna **

**Also, here some of my responses to some of your reviews.**

** horsegirl275 yes, I will be doing the whole book. I'm thinking of doing the whole series actually. But nothing's set in stone yet.**

** Rachel and the guests I'm completely sorry about the link. I put it up on Wattpad but it wasn't really progressing so I took it down. If you want it up again, just ask and I will. About the link, don't pay any attention to it then. **

**Thanks for everything!**


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